Your Interactive Brokers return, in your own currency
Interactive Brokers reports in your base currency. Why the same trade can be a gain in one currency and a loss in another, and how to see your own.
An Interactive Brokers statement is written in one currency, your base currency. If you hold shares that trade in another, every number on it has been through an exchange rate, and the return you read is partly the market and partly the currency.
What the statement is written in
Interactive Brokers says your base currency determines the currency of translation for your statements. When a statement holds several currencies, it totals all amounts in the Base Currency Summary section and details each currency below it.
Changing the base currency does not take effect until the next trading day. It changes the currency your statements are translated into; it does not change what you own.
Where the exchange rate shows up
Exchange rates move from one period to the next, so the base-currency value of a cash balance in another currency moves with them. Interactive Brokers reflects that difference in a line called Cash FX Translation Gain/Loss. In the MTM Performance Summary, the profit and loss of a Forex position includes the FX translation on cash balances and positions.
So a figure in your base currency mixes two things: how the investment moved, and how the currency it trades in moved against yours.
One trade, two answers
Take a US fund bought for $10,000 when 1 euro buys $1.10, and valued at $11,000 later, when 1 euro buys $1.25.
- In dollars: $10,000 became $11,000, a gain of 10.0%.
- In euros: you paid 10,000 / 1.10 = €9,090.91, and it is now worth 11,000 / 1.25 = €8,800.00, a loss of 3.2%.
Same shares, same price move. A dollar investor and a euro investor read opposite signs, because the dollar lost 12% of its value against the euro in between.
Neither number is wrong. The one that matters is the one in the currency you spend.
Which return Interactive Brokers reports
Interactive Brokers' glossary says the time-weighted return (TWR) measures the percent return produced over time independent of contributions or withdrawals, and that the money-weighted return (MWR) is influenced by the time of decisions to contribute or to withdraw funds. The MTM Performance Summary carries a Time Weighted Rate of Return field.
That is the same split as in our guide on XIRR and time-weighted return: one number for the market, one for your own money.
Seeing it in the currency you live in
FortuneOK keeps each holding in the currency it trades in and lets you choose any base currency. It converts each trade at the rate of its own day, so the cost of a purchase is what it cost in your currency on the day you paid. The returns row then shows how much of a gain came from the exchange rate. To bring your account across, follow the Interactive Brokers setup guide.
Annual return is money-weighted (XIRR) over the money you put in and took out, shown beside the time-weighted return. It appears as a yearly rate only once you have a year of history; before that you see the plain total.
Try your own deposits in the annualized return calculator.
Sources
- Base currency, Interactive Brokers.
- Cash report, Interactive Brokers.
- MTM Performance Summary, Interactive Brokers.
- PortfolioAnalyst glossary, Interactive Brokers.
- Read on 2026-10-10. FortuneOK is not affiliated with Interactive Brokers.